Berry Pickin' Mania

It's strawberry picking season here in Michigan and we finally had good enough weather to go and get some of these delicious red berries. The kids had a great time and behaved well for the most part and I was able to pick almost 13 lbs!!! Here are some great pictures of the kids enjoying the fruits of their labors.

Want a bite?


Isn't Leah adorable, even when she's covered in sticky strawberry juice?

Having a little picnic with a friend who joined us

Leah kept saying she was tired and wanted to go take a nap in the car. It was only 11:30 am!

My sweet helpers

Abbie with her new sunglasses and a bucket full of ripe strawberries that she picked herself

Don't they look delicious? At $1.49 a lb, I'd say it was worth it!

Abbie was so proud of how much we got and kept wanting to help me carry them or clean and cut them up.

Making freezer jam, which I've done in the past and is pretty easy to do

I made two batches of this and have 10 little half-pints in our freezer now!

A few days later I tried my hand at canning strawberry jam and it was successful too! It was much harder and more involved and I actually like the taste of the freezer jam better so I don't know if I'll do this very often but it was nice to know that I CAN do it (pun intended!) and will have even more jam to last us all year that can be stored easier.

Aren't these little jars pretty all lined up in a row?

Now I have just enough strawberries left over to make a pie or something yummy so if you have any extraordinary recipes out there, send them my way. Thanks!

Picking Peaches

So we couldn't stop with just one fruit picking excursion, we decided to up the ante and try peaches this time. There's this great little orchard about 45 min away called Erie Orchards that had some good prices on fresh peaches and also had a little store with other produce, donuts, cidar slush, jam, honey, etc. They also have a little petting farm and hay barn for the kids to play in but we didn't have enough time to stay for that this time. Anyway, we were there for about 2 hours (probably about 30 real productive minutes of picking time between rounding up the kids and make sure everyone was happy), but I got 26 lbs! I made this peach cobbler http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Easy-Peach-Cobbler/Detail.aspx with about 1/4 of them and it turned out great but now I need some ideas with what to do with the other 20 lbs. Are there any other fruit picking enthusiasts/food storage cooks out there with any ideas? I don't have any canning jars or a pressure cooker so canning slices or making jam is out. I have room in my freezer, though, so that's an option or I could try drying slices if anyone knows of a way to do it in the oven. Thanks in advance for any ideas!

Blueberries, blueberries, blueberries!

A friend and I went blueberry picking last week with our kids and had a great time. Abbie and her friend each had their own bucket and did so well filling them up by themselves. They probably ate as much or more than what was in their bucket.

Leah stayed busy playing in the dirt and turning herself into a puppy dog!

I picked about 4-1/2 lbs in 2 hours, which is pretty good considering I had to stop about every other minute to go find one of the kids or get them something to keep them happy. The blueberries tasted great and we had fun eating them raw, in pancakes, and ...

In a yummy triple berry crisp that I made over the weekend. It was really easy to make and was so good, with a little whipped cream on top. Here's the link to the recipe if you want to try it out: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Triple-Berry-Crisp/Detail.aspx. I used blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries and did twice as many berries and half as much butter, per some of the reviews. Also, I used wheat flour and Splenda and it still tasted great. Go try it out!